Operation Red Dog, Or 'The Time The KKK Tried To Take Over A Caribbean Island'

5 The Cast Of Characters Was Bonkers

“Operation Red Dog” was the codename for a filibuster invasion of Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic) to restore the former Prime Minister Patrick John to power. It was orchestrated by a group of Klansmen and other white supremacists seemingly plucked straight from a rejected Tarantino screwball comedy.

The key players in Dog Dong (that’s what we’re going to call it from now on, by the way) were the American Klansman Mike Perdue, who according to one source was also gay. Joining him was the Barbadian gunrunner Sydney Burnett-Alleyne, who used to act as the go-between for Patrick John and his apartheid business partners in South Africa. Also in play was one Mary Ann McGuire, a 26-year-old Irish-Canadian nurse connected to the IRA, as well as Don Black, who would later create Stormfront. That's the white nationalist website, not the character from The Boys, though, honestly, that still wouldn’t have been the weirdest detail about this group.

Other members of Team Dog Dong were apparently recruited with the help of former KKK leader and serial Trump-endorser David Duke, with the whole thing allegedly being financed by the German-Canadian neo-Nazi Martin K. Weiche. Let’s talk a bit more about him.

Though Weiche always denied financing Dog Dong, he did once say that he was "involved with the idea of Dominica since the middle of '79," probably while winking suggestively and giving an angel somewhere explosive diarrhea. So let’s stick to the facts about him. One of Weiche’s hobbies included cross-burnings. Not even on lawns of people he hated. He used to hold these bozo bonfires on his land and invite a bunch of other racists to hang around in Klan robes like a bunch of freaking dorks that they were.

He also had a room in his Ontario mansion built to resemble Hitler’s alpine retreat, owned an autographed copy of Mein Kampf, and had a massive swastika cut into the field behind his house. Basically, the guy was the Hitler of loving Hitler. As in, he was very dedicated to what he was doing, but what he was doing was goddamn awful. (“Goddamn awful” was also the running theme of Dog Dong.)

4 Their Plan Was Literally A Futurama Quote

The Dog Dong Gang’s plan was to paint themselves with black face camo, resist the sudden urge to shoot each other, and then rendezvous with Patrick John and the soldiers that were still loyal to him. They would then overthrow current prime minister Eugenia Charles, install John as a puppet leader, and get to work transforming the tiny island the size of Lexington, Kentucky, into Sexington, Cocainetucky.

Yup, Perdue apparently wanted to open a bunch of bars, casinos, brothels, and cocaine-processing plants across Dominica, and attract even more money by marketing his newly conquered nation as a tourist destination to other white supremacists. Basically, Perdue looked around the US, saw too many people of all creeds and races living together, and literally thought to himself “I’m going to start my own country! With blackjack! And hookers!" Besides cocaine, the endeavor would initially be fueled by an island industrialization plan linked to South Africa, the uncovering of which originally contributed to the ousting of Patrick John. But Caribbean islands are apparently like potato chips. You can’t just stop at one.

So while dreaming of his Las Vegas 2.0 (the “2” standing for the inches in his conquer boner) Perdue was already making plans to later also invade Grenada. And the weird thing is, his plan had a teeny-tiny chance of success. See, Dominica is a very small nation. Back then it had a population of 81,000 (today, it’s about 71,000) and most of their money came from tourism and banana exports. 

They were also a brand-new country, only having gained independence from the UK in 1978. Then in 1981, a massive hurricane hit Dominica, leaving it in disarray. The right group of people could have feasibly used that chaos to their advantage. Thankfully, besides “wing,” the Dog Dong Gang was as far from right as possible. But let’s circle back to Patrick John for a moment.

3 The Guy They Were Trying To Reinstate As PM Of Dominica Was A Massive POS

Patrick Roland John, who passed away on July 6 this year, actually had a promising start in life as a union leader turned mayor of Dominica’s capital of Roseau turned prime minister who helped lead the country to independence. Unfortunately, one of his first acts was to literally (look us in the eyes: LITERALLY) legalize murder.

John came to power in 1974 as Dominica’s premier (a title later replaced with “prime minister”) and in that same year, he passed the Prohibited and Undesirable Societies Act meant to combat the country’s various social problems. The law was nicknamed “The Dread Act” because it singled out Rastafarians and other people with dreadlocks as the source of Dominica’s supposed moral decline. 

The law also instilled a lot of dread in people so, hey, at least it was named aptly. That’s the only non-horrific thing about it, though, because the Dread Act not only gave police the power to arrest people with dreadlocks without a warrant and hold them for up to 48 hours, it also made it legal to straight-up kill them. The law literally PROHIBITED the prosecution of people who injured or killed a person with dreadlocks in “a residence.” 

How the person got into your residence was not something the law concerned itself with. If the cops followed obvious drag marks from the street to your house and found a handcuffed body in your basement, it was literally impossible to prosecute you if that body had dreadlocks. But let’s be clear about one thing: most of these legalized murders were almost definitely carried out by cops themselves.

Many Rastafarians took shelter in the woods and fought a kind of guerilla insurgency against John, eventually getting enough of the population on their side. Following protests where politicians were pelted with stones, the entire cabinet resigned, and John himself was eventually voted out of office in 1980. After Dog Dong, he was convicted to 12 years in prison, served five, became president of the Dominica Football Association, and eventually became embroiled in a FIFA bribery scandal in 2011. The Aristocrats!

2 The Entire Plan Failed For The Dumbest Reasons Possible

As we mentioned before, the plan to conquer Dominica had a real if slim chance of success, but before the Dog Dong Gang had a chance to get on a boat and sail towards their destination on the SS Cocaine Tiger, the New Orleans SWAT surrounded them and said: “You’re not going to Dominica, you’re going to jail.” So either the N.O. police had a bunch of psychics on the squad, or something else was up. Here’s what was up:

When Perdue chartered a boat from a man named Mike Howell, he told the man, for whatever reason, that his group was actually going to stage a coup for the CIA. Maybe he was trying to get a government discount on the rental or something. But because Howell wasn’t a complete moron, he didn’t buy that story for a second and alerted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms that a bunch of pasty dirtbags were planning to transport enough firearms to Dominica to build a War Machine suit for each of them.

The other part of the story is even dumber. Back on Dominica, an imprisoned soldier who was part of Patrick John’s plan to take over the country asked a jailer to pass a note to one of his buddies in another cell. The note contained numerous details about the attempted coup, and we know that because prison, shockingly, isn’t middle school (for one, people in prison usually don’t hate you for no good reason.) There are no unspoken rules about not reading passed messages. 

The policeman who got the message opened it pretty much instantly and found out all the details about Dog Dong. There’s a “screwed the pooch” joke in here somewhere but we probably overused the “Dog Dong” bit for it to work now.

Here’s where things get even more facepalmy: Perdue heard about John’s arrest but decided to go along with the plan and stepped right into a police sting. There was only one honorable thing for Perdue to do: put on a pigeon costume, get on a stool, and start singing his heart out. The guy immediately turned state evidence, informing on everyone even tangibly connected to Dog Dong. If the group ate at the same restaurant twice, he probably gave them its name as well. Interestingly, he also dropped a couple of big names that were apparently aware of the operation and were secretly supporting it: former Texas Governor John Connally … and Congressman Ron Paul.

1 Wait, What’s Ron Paul Doing Here?

Literally every person named by Perdue was subpoenaed to testify … except John Connally and Ron Paul. Which, you know, doesn’t look suspicious at all. So, was Paul involved in Dog Dong? All we have to go on is the word of a convicted white supremacist. Well, that plus over 30 years of Ron Paul being linked to other white supremacists and neo-Nazi scum.

In the '80s, Paul reportedly got a lot of his political contributions from listings in the neo-Nazi publication The Spotlight. During the '90s, Paul’s newsletter, "Ron Paul Political Report,” kept appearing in an online white supremacist directory alongside writings from the KKK. According to the Washington Post, Paul frequently signed off on the racist rantings and knew exactly where they were going. Did he really believe all the vile things in them or was he just doing a little dance for campaign money? The better question is: is there an answer to that question that doesn’t make Paul look like an assbag?

Look, we can’t say for sure if Paul loves white supremacists, but, by God, white supremacists sure do love him. David Duke once called Paul “our king” and endorsed him for president while Don Black, the Stormfront guy, campaigned hard for the man on his trash site and used it to rally the right-wing vote. This went on as recently as 2008, when Paul accepted donations from Stormfront and had a campaign coordinator from the KKK. Let’s say that again: When The Dark Knight was playing in cinemas, Ron Paul was openly taking money from a neo-Nazi site and employing actual Klansmen. 

Does this prove he had anything to do with Dog Dong? No. But put it this way: if there was a string of birdhouse sex in your area, you’d have a couple of questions for the local man who wrote The Joys of Sticking My Dick into Birdhouses and who frequently accepted cash from the American Birdhouse Sex Brotherhood. Hopefully, at least.

Top image: Postdlf/Wiki Commons